Contact Us

Advertising

Comics

Crossword

The Arizona Daily Wildcat Online

Catcalls

Policebeat

Search

Archives

News Sports Opinions Arts Classifieds

Monday October 16, 2000

Football site
Football site
UA Survivor
Agulara

 

Police Beat
Catcalls

 

Alum site

AZ Student Media

KAMP Radio & TV

 

Ready, set, midterm!

Headline Photo

By Zack Armstrong

We have come to the middle of another semester and I wish that it was the end. These semesters are just too long.

I begin the semester excited about my classes and some time right around now, I start to get tired of them. I forget about my pledge not to miss a class unless it is absolutely necessary and find myself hard-pressed to think of reasons to go.

Maybe I have a short attention span, but it seems like every semester during midterms, I become indifferent to my classes and I take on this "as long as I pass I don't care" attitude.

If classes ended now we could start taking new classes this week with fresher minds and a healthy desire to learn new and different things. We would not have to drag the course out for so long that halfway through it we think that an "Empty Nest" rerun is more important than attending.

Maybe it has something to do with the midterms themselves, though. They seem to be just a reminder that at the end of all of this we have a really big test which we have to start preparing for. And now the midterms seem so insignificant in comparison.

There is, however, a much better way of going about these midterms. If the administrators are going to insist on these long semesters then they should at least make them as exciting as possible. It would be incredibly simple. It is all in the words one chooses to describe them.

If the test we take at the end of the year is called a final, then the test we take in the middle should be called a semifinal. I do not know about anyone else, but I would be a lot more jazzed about going to a semifinal than a midterm. I would be down-right excited.

"Hey man, I've got my semifinals today!"

"Bitchin! Hard core! Oh yeah!"

This exchange would be immediately followed by a high-five and a possible slap on the butt. And this, my friends, is only the beginning.

We would not study anymore, we would train. They have been telling us since we were kids that the brain is like a muscle, so let's start using the same verbs as athletes do when we are talking about it.

And at the start of every test, the teacher would tell the students to take out their equipment instead of a blue book or a calculator or whatever it is that those science-y people use.

The only downside would be that everyone would have to wear a jump suit and some knee and elbow pads to class everyday just in case they took a spill.

Other than that, though, I cannot see any reason why we should not go ahead and make these modifications - if for no other reason than that I have seen so many episodes of "Empty Nest" that my mental health is in jeopardy.